Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has a new job as a regular contributor for CBS News which made the big announcement on Sunday.
Condoleezza Rice served as the secretary of state under President George W. Bush and was the first African American woman to hold that title, but now she will be laying some journalistic roots as she becomes anchor Bob Schieffer on “Face the Nation.”
Rice won’t be co-anchoring the show, but she will be making several appearances as a panelist to share her insight politics and economic issues.
“Everybody knows that Condoleezza Rice was President Bush’s Secretary of State, but I’m very pleased to announce that she has a new job as of today,” Schieffer announced Sunday. “She is joining CBS News as a contributor; we’re honored to have you making your first appearance on CBS here on ‘Face the Nation.’”
Although the network remained vague about what duties Rice will take on moving forward, they did release a statement saying “the former Secretary of State will use her higher insight and vast experience to explore issues facing America at home and abroad.”
In addition to her new job as a CBS News contributor, Condoleezza will continue her role as a Political Science professor at Stanford University.
Meanwhile, her first appearance on “Face the Nation” was a surprise but her message while on the panel wasn’t quite as unexpected.
With Democratic President Barack Obama being sworn in today, it was no surprise that Condoleezza Rice would have a few things to say about Obama and his administration.
Despite the fact that President Obama has made several attempts to appease both political parties and encourage both Republicans and Democrats to move forward as a collective unit rather than two battling opponents, Rice feels as if his part is still responsible for the division in Congress.
“Obviously, relations with Congress are, on one side of the aisle, pretty poisoned right now,” she told the “Face the Nation” host. “But also out in the country, the American people don’t want to see this divisiveness.”
The main issue keeping Congress divided for now is the debate over gun law reform and of course the troubling state of the economy, but with no compromise there is very little progress being made.
“They want to see the President say, ‘I won the election, and now here’s where we are going, be we are going together. I recognize that we have differences that may be even deep, but first and foremost we are Americans,’” Rice continued.
Needless to say, the separation between Congress isn’t an issue that falls entirely on the President so much as it does the individual members in Congress who refuse to compromise their own beliefs in order to reach a plan and move forward.
She did find some sort of fault in her party claiming that they have a “political and policy problem” that is preventing them from reaching a “broad” audience.
“The Republican Party has to demonstrate it has broad appeal,” Rice added.
As for the inauguration, she shared that she isn’t surprised that Obama’s second inauguration isn’t quite as much of a big deal, but that has nothing to do with him as a president.
“Well, frankly, the first one is a lot more exciting than the second,” she said of Bush’s inaugurations. “I remember being completely taken with the moment (during the first one, but) by the second one, I thought ‘Ya know I really need to get to work.’”
In addition to discussing the inauguration and politics, however, Rice also opened up about her own personal experienced during the Civil Rights movements.
The 58-year-old professor revealed that she never even had a white classmate until she was in the 10th grade.
No word out yet on if she continue to balance her new CBS job with her job as a professor of Stanford’s business school.
